Semi-OT: Why Kids Can't use Computers

[Christopher Browne]

On Wed, Aug 14, 2013 at 6:32 PM, William Park <opengeometry-FFYn/CNdgSA at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 14, 2013 at 01:01:08AM -0400, Paul King wrote:
>> ... Hence, my choices from the Pascal family. Languages like C, C++, and
>> Python can be taught in Grade 11 or 12 once the basics are out of the way.
>
> Off topic... what really happened to Pascal/Modula-X ?
> From my memory, it had pretty fast compile time, and they could've added
> more data structures into the language if needed.

Modula (Wirth) was created as a successor to Pascal, in effect, in
part, to address the sorts of things that Brian Kernighan criticized
(http://www.lysator.liu.se/c/bwk-on-pascal.html).

It quite soon begat Modula-2 (Wirth), which was viable enough to grow
a pretty large set of compilers (see:
http://freepages.modula2.org/compi.html), many still available.

Wirth created Oberon, which also included an operating system
environment, as his "successor".

Modula-3 was created as a joint venture of DEC and Olivetti research
groups, and was quite interesting.  Unfortunately, it was never nearly
so popular as M2.  The one "free software"-relevant piece of software
made in M3 was CVSup, which was a system for synchronizing CVS
archives, used pretty heavily by the BSD folk.
http://www.modula3.org/

Most universities headed down the "we want to be vocational colleges
rather than universities" path, and adopted Java instead.
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